Retailers estimate that one in every three Microsoft Xbox 360’s sold fails leaving frustrated owners staring at the red ring of death, or worst a black screen that reads “disc unreadable”. When compared to other systems, former EB games associate Matthiew G said…

“Failure rates for all other consoles were not high enough for EB to consider revising their policies. Most other console systems have a failure rate of less than one percent, including the PlayStation 3.”

Not to be left out of the conversation, when another EB Games manager was asked if the store warranty was “worth the price”, he mentioned that the Nintendo Wii, with hundreds of units sold at their location has had ZERO come back as defective. We can hear Nintendo executives patting themselves on the back right now, no wait that’s just thunder.

A Best Buy associate who chose to remain anonymous claimed that the failure rate of the Microsoft Xbox 360 was in the ballpark of “between a quarter to a third” of the systems sold.

That said the Xbox 360 is the most successful console of the next gen bunch worldwide and has the largest market saturation to date with an impressive list of exclusive titles. Simple mathematics tells us that the more there are out there the more of a chance that some will fail, but 33% is still very high.

Microsoft stands behind their estimate that the Xbox 360 failure rate is within three to five percent, which they believe is well within the industry standard and in 2006 increased their warranty from 90 days up to 1 year. While they stand behind their estimate, it unfortunately does not seem to be accurate according to retailers of the product.

Based on a recent poll that was conducted by DailyTech with retailers nationwide, the Xbox 360 was unanimously named the least reliable gaming console in recent history. The high failure rate of the 360 has sent EB games officials back to the drawing board to revise their console warranty policy in 2007 and as a result the one year warranty price on a console is now nearly double!

“We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival.” - said former EB Games employee Matthieu G.

Microsoft has made an effort in the realm of customer service to address the “ring of death” by adding an option to their customer support line (1-800-4MY-XBOX) called “three flashing red lights”. Those of us that still have the Johnny Cash “Ring Of Fire” parody still stuck in our heads, please try and control yourselves.

So while the 360 is the market leader with the Wii gaining fast, maybe consumers should be giving the Playstation 3 a second or “third” look before picking up a next gen console. While we admit that things are not looking great for Sony right now, the company is not going to roll over and die, Blu-ray is the current market leader, and the Playstation 3’s list of titles will only improve as time goes by and more developers familiarize themselves with it’s specs.

Retailers estimate that one in every three Microsoft Xbox 360’s sold fails leaving frustrated owners staring at the red ring of death, or worst a black screen that reads “disc unreadable”. When compared to other systems, former EB games associate Matthiew G said…

“Failure rates for all other consoles were not high enough for EB to consider revising their policies. Most other console systems have a failure rate of less than one percent, including the PlayStation 3.”

Not to be left out of the conversation, when another EB Games manager was asked if the store warranty was “worth the price”, he mentioned that the Nintendo Wii, with hundreds of units sold at their location has had ZERO come back as defective. We can hear Nintendo executives patting themselves on the back right now, no wait that’s just thunder.

A Best Buy associate who chose to remain anonymous claimed that the failure rate of the Microsoft Xbox 360 was in the ballpark of “between a quarter to a third” of the systems sold.

That said the Xbox 360 is the most successful console of the next gen bunch worldwide and has the largest market saturation to date with an impressive list of exclusive titles. Simple mathematics tells us that the more there are out there the more of a chance that some will fail, but 33% is still very high.Microsoft stands behind their estimate that the Xbox 360 failure rate is within three to five percent, which they believe is well within the industry standard and in 2006 increased their warranty from 90 days up to 1 year. While they stand behind their estimate, it unfortunately does not seem to be accurate according to retailers of the product.

Based on a recent poll that was conducted by DailyTech with retailers nationwide, the Xbox 360 was unanimously named the least reliable gaming console in recent history. The high failure rate of the 360 has sent EB games officials back to the drawing board to revise their console warranty policy in 2007 and as a result the one year warranty price on a console is now nearly double!

“We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival.” - said former EB Games employee Matthieu G.

Microsoft has made an effort in the realm of customer service to address the “ring of death” by adding an option to their customer support line (1-800-4MY-XBOX) called “three flashing red lights”. Those of us that still have the Johnny Cash “Ring Of Fire” parody still stuck in our heads, please try and control yourselves.

So while the 360 is the market leader with the Wii gaining fast, maybe consumers should be giving the Playstation 3 a second or “third” look before picking up a next gen console. While we admit that things are not looking great for Sony right now, the company is not going to roll over and die, Blu-ray is the current market leader, and the Playstation 3’s list of titles will only improve as time goes by and more developers familiarize themselves with it’s specs.

Source: DailyTech

ninetndos always made a quality system, and PS had like 6 years to get it right xbox rushed teh 360 out. thats why its failure rate is high.

man i wouldnt mind an elite 360. but i heard that the elites are almost exactly the same. no issues with the heating were resolved or upgrades for the fans/cooling were made. i guess ill wait for those new nano chips that are suppose to deliver a cooler performance.

man i wouldnt mind an elite 360. but i heard that the elites are almost exactly the same. no issues with the heating were resolved or upgrades for the fans/cooling were made. i guess ill wait for those new nano chips that are suppose to deliver a cooler performance.

nanochip modles are scheduled for 08. price will probably drop by then. as far as overheating i haven't had an issue and between all the people in my house it sbeen running like 12 hours a day every day soo.. plus they make accessories to cool it

well whatever is failing is probably a result of heat. and i heard about those accessories one of them melted the rear of my friends 360. i bet theres better ones out there. anyway im going to buy my 360 from costco because their return policy should protect my moneys. ill be getting a ps3 soon aswell.

i'll likely buy a PS3 some time next year. It's not a worthy investment now to sit and collect dust. When there's more than 1 must-have game, i'll consider it. until then, i still need to see who will be the outright winner between dvd and blu-ray. i'm still mad about the minidisc players i bought when those came out. aside from that, xbox has had my money since 2002 because of XBox Live and their online gaming. PS3 couldn't compete. When they develop an online gaming system that's even comparable to the 360, I'll definitely be sold. Pretty games only take you so far after you beat em. You've got developers basically creating 2 games in one for XBox Live (see: Splinter Cell).

my 360 was a used 360, and it's working fine. no red lights, sometimes i play rainbow six for 4 hours, and i get no overheating. as for those coolers, all most of those do is suck dust into your machine. You're better off buying an oscillating fan and making sure your 360 is in the range of the air if you're really concerned.

so even the one with twice the hard drive space is less then the PS3 by over 100 dollars. xbox hit a sweet spot. for the people looking for a cheaper system to enjoy next gen games there is a 300 dollar model. for the casual gamer (most people) there is the 20GB model. and for the hardcore gamer there is a 120GB model. the PS3 issues is it is overpriced and doesn't have any huge exclusive titles. honostly there isn't 1 PS3 only game that i even care about at this point. as amen said. maybe when they boosth there lineup and add some better online play i might get one. but i don't think it happens till the PS4. i don't expect sony to be able to match xbox live but they need somehting better then they got. MS invested 1 billion dollars in xbox live. sony dones't have money like that to throw around.

when i went to eb games to look around about weeks ago the workers there said that microsoft owns about 69 percent of sony and is forcing them to have their gamers pay for online and have a system like xbl

when i went to eb games to look around about weeks ago the workers there said that microsoft owns about 69 percent of sony and is forcing them to have their gamers pay for online and have a system like xbldont bash me, just passing on what i hear

i doubt that. if they did own 69% why would they enter the console war?but then again MS does own part of apple and made a zune to compete with it. however that fact MS is a majority holder is completely untrue. i think the whole thing is probably made up by a sony fan boy cause they were all touting how xbox fan boys will have to pay a measily 50 dollars a year but they were gonna get it free. and i tried explaining that there was no way they would be getting it free but it fell on deaf ears. it just doens't make sense for sony who is charging an arm and leg for the system to give away online play. it would make most sense for them to come in just cheaper then MS (maybe 45 a year)

alot of people were complaging in the 1st gen systems about it scratching the game discs, turns out it was cause they tried moving the system from vertical to horizontal while the game was spinning. what did they think was gonna happen. the level of stupidity in the country is amazing. so xbox had to add into the the manual not to change teh position of the system while its on.

You know why the 360 had all the returns dont you? Because it came out first and EVERYBODY wanted the PS3. So a bunch of kids sent theirs back, calling it defective, and hoped to use the money or credit on the PS3.

That's the only thing I can think of because I'm really surprised how happy I am with my 360. I hated the old controller but the 360 isn't bad at all. Plus it wasn't 600 dollars.